


Kav 0

by redbeardsghost



Category: all OCs - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 09:54:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20338201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbeardsghost/pseuds/redbeardsghost
Summary: A long-running scam goes south, and a relationship turns into a real LDR.





	Kav 0

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this to clarify for myself some background for a larger body of work, in which Kav and Miles will be minor but possibly recurring characters. It is not necessarily canon, though I wrote it to be, because I needed to define how certain events happened in order to have them straight for the main WIP. Obviously, if I need to for the main WIP, this whole thing could become non-cannonical, or rewritten to please me. Also, this is the way it came from my fingers, I make no apolgies for editing errors or the lack of names for most characters. No ohter characters, named or otherwise, will be in the main WIP anyway.

The street was bustling. Well, not really. The street was just sitting there, but people were bustling up and down it, and across it. In this part of the city mechanical transportation was forbidden, and so of course you saw signs of it everywhere. A block away, where the storefronts were, the fiction was maintained, but here behind the facade, there were sleds that no person could ever have pulled on there own, and lanes were kept open for taxis for the wealthy and connected, because no one really thought they were going to walk all they way into downtown just to be seen entering the right eatery or boutique. This was Kav’s world, the hidden world, the world that kept the public world working. He felt the pulse of it. In it’s way, it was almost like a machine. He felt like, if you could just let yourself go mad enough, you could trace the city the way you would one of the sleds or automatic doors at the rear of each store.  
Just then, the door next to him that led to this train of thought opened, and a man came through. Tall, handsome, and with a quirky smile, he took Kav in his arms and gave him a quick kiss.  
“They’re ready for you. The “portal” should be turned on in thirty seconds.”  
“Great. Why are you out here? You should still be in there, Miles.”  
“Because they changed what they want. They want you to get them an unopened deck of cards, and they say that they will have told their man on the other side this.”  
“Crap. I don’t have an unopened one, just my used one.”  
“That’s why I’m here. I pulled one out of their pocket.”  
“Get back in before you’re missed.” He took it out of his lover’s hand just as the false door was outlined in purple light.  
“There’s my distraction. Make it good.”  
Kave stumbled through the false door as though he were stepping down from a higher height and had forgotten to adjust for the difference. The noise of his falling served to disguise the sound of his own door closing, but it should also attract all eyes to him and away from the real door, where Miles would be sneaking back in.  
This was a scam they had been running successfully now for several months, and it had probably about run its course. For decades, really since people had developed the technology to create manmade portals between different frames of reality, there had been a dream of making one that could be carried by a single person. What Kav and Miles were selling was a huge, heavy backpack that weighed less than it looked like it should, but would shine a purple light on a wall, one that looked enough like a portal to fool a credulous subject. By careful prep, the mark could be convinced that Kav had used it to travel to a different frame and returned, long enough to convince them to buy one for a thousand times the value of the overpriced and highly inconvenient flashlight.  
But this time, something was wrong. The marks weren’t standing there with amazed looks on their faces. They didn’t even look skeptical. Instead, they were all pointing guns at he and Miles, and the “portal generator” was sitting on the ground, instead of being worn by the mark. Kav froze. He wasn’t at his best when things went this wrong.  
Miles was. Bless his mad heart, he lived for these moments. He turned the generator on to max brightness, and fled out the fake wall, locking it behind him. As he did, he yelled “You have failed me for the last time!”  
Now all the guns were pointed at Kav, and he was twice as paralyzed as before. The main mark glanced over at one of his bodyguards, who wasn’t holding a gun, and that man said “Perhaps you would like to explain what just happened. After all, if you had really just come through the portal we opened, you would have been swimming in acid.”  
“Um. Would you believe the generator doesn’t work?”  
“Do tell.”  
“Are you going to kill me after I do?”  
“That depends.”  
“On what?”  
“On whether you decide to work for me. You ran a tight scam there. I could use a person of your talents. But not as an independent.”  
“You’re with a family?”  
“I am a family.”  
Kav fainted.  
When he came to, he was tied to a chair, and there was a whispering behind him.  
“Do you want me to untie you?”  
“Miles?”  
“Yes. You didn’t think I would actually abandon you? I was trying to give you a chance to rat me out, to give you a chance to escape. What happened?”  
“They didn’t call the cops. They’re family. I haven’t said anything yet. What do I do?”  
“Tell them it was my scam, and then tell them about our second hideout. I’ll wait there with a plan to leave, and fake my death. But promise that as soon as you can you’ll come after me. I’m not sure what frame I’ll end up on, or where you will, but we’ll meet at the city built where the capitol is, in whatever frame we end up in. On the new moon, we go to the point where the missouri and mississipi rivers meet. Every frame that people can survive in has both rivers, so that should be the center of civilization in whatever world we get to.”  
“I’ll never stop looking for you. You may be stuck in a frame without portal tech, so it falls to me to find you. Do you know where you’re going?”  
“I’ll have to set the portal and jump, so it will have to be somewhere they won’t follow. You’ll see it.”  
And after kissing the back of his neck, he left.

It was hours later that someone came in with something for him to drink. “Awake now? Good. Can you tell us about the man who escaped from us?”  
“My partner. Miles. The scam was his plan. I was his assistant.”  
“We figured that. That’s why he did the talking and you did the disappearing and reappearing. Where can we find him?”  
“I want protection from him, if I tell you.”  
“I’ll have to run that by the boss.”  
“I can lead you right to him, but I have to know that the job offer was genuine.”  
At that, the boss came in.  
“Here’s how it’s going to work. Marco here is due to go to jail for a robbery. I would rather have him not. You lead me to your partner, and I’ll let you go to jail in his place, and let it be known that it was a service to me that you were there. That will protect you from this Miles fellow, and show your sincerity about helping me. Otherwise I have to assume that you are not bargaining in good faith, and are trying to scam me again.”  
“I’ve always wondered what jail was like.”  
“So, where can we find this Miles?”

The bolthole was at the top of a flight of stairs. It was a rundown apartment, exactly the kind of place you would expect to find someone who was trying not to be found. But it works because in a place like that, it’s hard to find someone unless you know exactly, or at least approximately, where to look. The two enforcers stood to either side of the door while Kav opened it with his key. After all, what kind of bolthole would it be if Kav couldn’t also go there. As soon as the door was open they burst in. Miles looked up from the sofa where he had been sitting, to see the three of them. His ears lay flat in panic and he jumped backward over the couch, and ran back towards the bedroom. He threw the door closed so hard that it bounced open again, and they could see him jump through the window.  
“Where does that lead?”  
“Fire escape.”  
“Where will he go now”  
“I don’t know”  
On of the enforcers chased Miles through the window, while the other dragged Kav back down the stairs. The four of them all reached the ground at about the same time, with Miles a little in front. He raced down the street, the three others chasing him. A kilometer away was a public portal, one with limited service. Miles ducked inside, with one enforcer right behind him. By the time they other two got there, the enforcer still keeping a tight grip on Kav, Miles was gone.  
“Where did he go?”  
“He knocked out the operator, set the portal himself, and jumped in. I didn’t want to follow to an unknown portal without backup and without anyone to report where I had gone.”  
“Good choice. I don’t recognize the settings.”  
Kav’s ears were laying flat against his head in real terror. “I do.”  
“You know frames?”  
“Miles picked me because I could teach him how to talk about frames. I used to work in the registration office, and we had to memorize the List. Most frames on the list I only have a vague idea why they are listed, but that one was famous. I could be in trouble just for telling you why it’s Listed. I would rather not tell you. It could mean all our lives.”  
“We’ll take you back and leave it up to the boss.”

Kav turned the generator off, and then spun the controls so that when the operator woke up they wouldn’t know where it had been set to.  
“Hey, we didn’t have a chance to write that down.”  
“You’re happier not knowing it, and I already do. If your boss insists, I can tell him how to follow, but I think it’s a really bad idea. Anyway, I know for certain that Miles can’t hurt me now. He can’t ever get back from there, and will probably be dead within hours.”

An hour later, Kav was standing in front of the boss.  
“I need to know what frame exactly he went to. Otherwise I’m going to treat you as someone who helped him escape, which means you’ll still go to jail, but while you’re there you won’t enjoy my protection.”  
“I could give you the settings, but it wouldn’t mean much, and because it’s on the List, you’ll have trouble going there. If I tell you why it is listed, can you prevent anyone from knowing I told you?”  
“If I think it’s important.”  
Kav took a piece of paper and a pen from the desk, as though he were nervous and wanted to sketch to cal his nerves. He wrote a single word on the piece of paper, and left it there.  
“I guess you’ll have to put me in jail for Marko, and you will have to do what you think best.”  
He left the room, and the boss picked up the piece of paper. On it there was a single word written, and it was enough to frighten him into not chasing Miles.

Humans.


End file.
